"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

In recent weeks, there’s been some question as to how far Dems are willing to go in making the explosive charge that Republicans are deliberately trying to sabotage the economy in order to improve their chances of defeating President Obama in 2012.

On a conference call just now with reporters, Senator Chuck Schumer made the most aggressive case we’ve heard yet along these lines, leaving little doubt that Dems are locking in behind this message as the deficit talks hit crunch time and as the 2012 campaign looms.

“Do they simply want the economy to go down the drain to further their political gain?” Schumer asked. “They seem to be against anything that may create jobs, because they view a weak economy as key to their political chances in 2012.”

“It’s an uncomfortable question, to be sure,” Schumer continued. “Are they trying to undermine the economy on purpose, for political gain? Harry Truman had a do-nothing Congress. The Republicans seem to be trying to make this a do-nothing-on-the-economy Congress.”

The latest evidence of this, according to Schumer: GOP Senators boycotted a hearing yesterday on three pending free trade deals they once supported.

“If there’s one thing the GOP has stood for throughout their history, it’s free trade,” Schumer said. “When Senator Baucus unveiled an agreement to proceed, you would have thought Republicans would jump for joy. Instead, Republicans took us down the rabbit hole once again.”

“Are Republicans opposing yet another measure they once supported simpy because that measure might be good for the economy?” Schumer asked, also citing GOP opposition to recent measures like a payroll tax cut and to small business development programs.

Pressed by a reporter on whether he really believes the GOP wants to destroy the economy on purpose, Schumer went further than ever before and took this out of the realm of the hypothetical.

“It’s a thought you don’t want to believe,” Schumer said, “but every day they keep giving us more and more evidence that there’s no choice but to answer Yes.”

The key point here is that Dem messaging chief Schumer is signaling that each example like this will now be pressed into service to build the larger case that Republicans have decided that a worse economy for the country is better politically for them, so any measure that risks creating jobs must be opposed at all costs. It seems like a clear effort to bait the GOP into responding to the charges, so the country can hear an argument over the GOP’s true motives. This line of attack also seems designed to persuade voters — and commentators who are reluctant to accept this sort of thing — that No, both sides are not equally to blame for our current travails.

...Another lawmaker, known for ringing denunciations of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said Obama's sharp criticisms of Republicans had begun to sound like the rantings of "a left-wing strongman."

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, widely touted as a possible vice presidential prospect, told the National Review Online that he was "shocked" by the tone of a Wednesday press conference in which Obama blasted his foes.

"It was rhetoric, I thought, that was more appropriate for some left-wing strongman than for the president of the United States," Rubio added...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama seems to have forgotten about Al Gore and the ashtray smashed to smithereens.

Obama told a news conference Wednesday he was going where no president had gone before in attacking burdensome federal regulations.

In reality, many presidents have been there and done that. Bill Clinton, for one, ordered a sweeping review of the thicket of rules and his vice president took a hammer to the ashtray on TV to underscore one dumb regulation.

Regulations, corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers and Moammar Gadhafi formed a sort of rogue's gallery in Obama's remarks as the president talked about debt negotiations with Republicans, the NATO campaign in Libya, the war in Afghanistan and more. But the tale behind each rogue is more complex than was told.

A look at some of his statements and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: "What I have done — and this is unprecedented, by the way, no administration's done this before — is I've said to each agency, don't just look at current regulations or don't just look at future regulations, regulations that we're proposing, let's go backwards and look at regulations that are already on the books, and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them. And we are in the process of doing that, and we've already identified changes that could potentially save billions of dollars for companies over the next several years."

THE FACTS: Plenty of other presidents have gone on the hunt for needless federal regulations.

Clinton gave the job of "reinventing government" to his vice president, Gore, who wielded the hammer on David Letterman's "Late Show" in 1993 to demonstrate silly federal rules on ashtray safety. Clinton signed an executive order directing agencies to eliminate half of all internal regulations, and a companion order taking aim at regulations that affect people outside of government.

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2007: "Every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations. For example, President Carter's Executive Order 12044 required agencies to periodically review existing rules; one charge of President Reagan's task force on regulatory relief was to recommend changes to existing regulations; President George H.W. Bush instructed agencies to identify existing regulations to eliminate unnecessary regulatory burden; and President Clinton, under section 5 of Executive Order 12866, required agencies to develop a program to 'periodically review' existing significant regulations. In 2001, 2002, and 2004, the administration of President George W. Bush asked the public to suggest reforms of existing regulations."

___

OBAMA: "I've said to some of the Republican leaders, 'You go talk to your constituents — the Republican constituents — and ask them, are they willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break?' And I'm pretty sure what the answer would be."

THE FACTS: Obama mentioned the tax break on corporate jets six times, enough so a viewer might think eliminating it would be offer significant savings to the government.

The benefit, which relates to how corporations write off the value of private jets, is worth just about $3 billion over 10 years, according to Republican congressional aides. The White House doesn't dispute the figure. That pales next to the $400 billion or so in additional tax revenue Democrats have proposed in budget negotiations, and it's negligible compared with the $2 trillion-plus Republicans want to cut to match a two-year increase in the debt ceiling. There is also no direct relationship between preserving that tax break and cutting spending in any particular budget area, despite Obama's suggestion that federal programs for child safety would be at risk.

Instead, Obama seemed intent on highlighting an area of spending that the public might view as particularly egregious in a faltering economy, although he didn't suggest it would solve the entire problem. Other tax breaks he mentioned getting rid of Wednesday were for "millionaires and billionaires," oil companies and hedge fund managers.

___

OBAMA: "Moammar Gadhafi, who prior to Osama bin Laden was responsible for more American deaths than just about anybody on the planet, was threatening to massacre his people."

THE FACTS: Gadhafi's history of supporting terrorist acts lethal to Americans did not stop the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, from cultivating a relationship with him after he renounced terrorism. Gadhafi's government shared information on its nuclear program, tipped Washington about Islamic militants after the 2001 terrorist attacks and persuaded Western nations to lift sanctions.

Indeed, the Obama administration treated him with kid gloves in March 2010 after then-spokesman P.J. Crowley at the State Department joked about Gadhafi's call for a holy war against Switzerland. The spokesman apologized for making comments that were "perceived as a personal attack" against the Libyan leader and expressed regret that the remarks became "an obstacle to further progress in our bilateral relationship."

Obama only refocused on Gadhafi's past when a continued relationship became untenable after the crackdown on opponents of the Libyan government and the subsequent air campaign by U.S. and NATO forces.

Obama no doubt was referring to U.S. deaths from terrorist acts, not from foes in wartime, when he likened Gadhafi to bin Laden. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, an act tied to Libya, killed 270 people, 189 of them American. Two Americans died in a Berlin disco bombing that wounded hundreds in 1986, and seven Americans were among the 170 dead when UTA Flight 772 crashed in the Niger desert in 1989 after a suitcase bomb exploded. Those attacks also were traced to Libya.

Apparently under the impression that Morning Joe was on a 7 second delay this morning Time reporter and MJ regular Mark Halperin summed up his impression of President Obama's press conference yesterday: "I thought he was a dick yesterday."

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

*That's little Davy Brooks and the other sissies at Media Matters. Once upon a time, kiddies, little Davy called himself a conservative. Then, one day, he realized two things: He liked boys, not girls, and that real conservatives know buggery is a mortal sin, not fun and games.

Any remaining doubt that Media Matters reason-for-being is to take down FOX News? Check this out. Turns out the progressive, non-profit watch dog website has a FOX News "war room" that operates in four separate shifts from the hours of 5am to 1am.

If you are a regular reader of the material put out by the left-wing activist group Media Matters, you probably have gotten their message that the Fox News Channel is the root of all that’s evil in the world. But does that make anyone employed by the network automatically evil? (Did Howard Kurtz take a veiled shot at Dick Morris?)- The Daily Caller via Yahoo! News

That was fast. Hours after Ed Henry announced his move from CNN to Fox News as chief White House correspondent, the liberal media watchdog Media Matters has begun painting him as a right-wing nut job. The treatment is par for the course in the world of partisan watchdog groups (we'd expect the same from its conservative archival Newsbusters if a CNN anchor moved to MSNBC). But the group's rushed ...- The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo! News

Ed Henry is on Media Matters' [Expletive] List now that he's moved from CNN to Fox News as the network's chief White House correspondent. The National Journal suggest the liberal media watchdog may be a little hasty in its attempts to paint Henry as an overtly partisan right-winger.

A shocking exposé of the causes of Asia's massive gender imbalance and its consequences across the globe

Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women.

The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.

Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them.

"Mara Hvistendahl's writing has appeared in Harper's, The New Republic, Scientific American, the Financial Times magazine, Popular Science, Foreign Policy, and the Los Angeles Times. A correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education and former contributing editor at Seed magazine, Mara has won an Education Writers Association award and been nominated for the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award. She first lived in Asia over a decade ago, when her studies took her to Beijing. She has spent half of the years since then in China, a base from which she reported extensively from around the continent."

In 1990, the economist Amartya Sen published an essay in The New York Review of Books with a bombshell title: “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing.” His subject was the wildly off-kilter sex ratios in India, China and elsewhere in the developing world. To explain the numbers, Sen invoked the “neglect” of third-world women, citing disparities in health care, nutrition and education. He also noted that under China’s one-child policy, “some evidence exists of female infanticide.”

Twenty years later, the number of “missing” women has risen to more than 160 million, and a journalist named Mara Hvistendahl has given us a much more complete picture of what’s happened. Her book is called “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.” As the title suggests, Hvistendahl argues that most of the missing females weren’t victims of neglect. They were selected out of existence, by ultrasound technology and second-trimester abortion.

The spread of sex-selective abortion is often framed as a simple case of modern science being abused by patriarchal, misogynistic cultures. Patriarchy is certainly part of the story, but as Hvistendahl points out, the reality is more complicated — and more depressing.

Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less. In many communities, she writes, “women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,” because male offspring bring higher social status. In countries like India, sex selection began in “the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” before spreading down the income ladder.

Moreover, Western governments and philanthropic institutions have their fingerprints all over the story of the world’s missing women.

From the 1950s onward, Asian countries that legalized and then promoted abortion did so with vocal, deep-pocketed American support. Digging into the archives of groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Hvistendahl depicts an unlikely alliance between Republican cold warriors worried that population growth would fuel the spread of Communism and left-wing scientists and activists who believed that abortion was necessary for both “the needs of women” and “the future prosperity — or maybe survival — of mankind,” as the Planned Parenthood federation’s medical director put it in 1976.

For many of these antipopulation campaigners, sex selection was a feature rather than a bug, since a society with fewer girls was guaranteed to reproduce itself at lower rates.

Hvistendahl’s book is filled with unsettling scenes, from abandoned female fetuses littering an Indian hospital to the signs in Chinese villages at the height of the one-child policy’s enforcement. (“You can beat it out! You can make it fall out! You can abort it! But you cannot give birth to it!”) The most disturbing passages, though, are the ones that depict self-consciously progressive Westerners persuading themselves that fewer girls might be exactly what the teeming societies of the third world needed.

Over all, “Unnatural Selection” reads like a great historical detective story, and it’s written with the sense of moral urgency that usually accompanies the revelation of some enormous crime.

But what kind of crime? This is the question that haunts Hvistendahl’s book, and the broader debate over the vanished 160 million.

The scale of that number evokes the genocidal horrors of the 20th century. But notwithstanding the depredations of the Chinese politburo, most of the abortions were (and continue to be) uncoerced. The American establishment helped create the problem, but now it’s metastasizing on its own: the population-control movement is a shadow of its former self, yet sex selection has spread inexorably with access to abortion, and sex ratios are out of balance from Central Asia to the Balkans to Asian-American communities in the United States.

This places many Western liberals, Hvistendahl included, in a distinctly uncomfortable position. Their own premises insist that the unborn aren’t human beings yet, and that the right to an abortion is nearly absolute. A self-proclaimed agnostic about when life begins, Hvistendahl insists that she hasn’t written “a book about death and killing.” But this leaves her struggling to define a victim for the crime that she’s uncovered.

It’s society at large, she argues, citing evidence that gender-imbalanced countries tend to be violent and unstable. It’s the women in those countries, she adds, pointing out that skewed sex ratios are associated with increased prostitution and sex trafficking.

These are important points. But the sense of outrage that pervades her story seems to have been inspired by the missing girls themselves, not the consequences of their absence.

Here the anti-abortion side has it easier. We can say outright what’s implied on every page of “Unnatural Selection,” even if the author can’t quite bring herself around.

The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re “missing.” The tragedy is that they’re dead.

Yglesias takes issue with Douthat's column on sex-selective abortion (ie the abortion of girls because they are girls). In response, Ross repeats his main argument:

My point was that the story of sex-selective abortion creates more difficulties — both intellectually and, I would submit, emotionally — for abortion-rights supporters than it does for those of us on the pro-life side of the argument. For one thing, it presents a policy problem: If the right to abortion is a fundamental human liberty, how do you address sex selection without infringing dramatically on the right to privacy?

Erica Grieder tackles one of Douthat's weaker points. I think his main one is inarguable.

Mara Hvistendahl's new essay in Foreign Policy about sex-selective abortions in Asia is keeping the debate alive about the West's role in promoting policies that have resulted in sharp gender gap in Asia. In her new bookUnnatural Selection, Hvistendahl suggests that the West has promoted sex selection, in part through the spread of ultrasound technology and liberalized abortion policies. Her thesis has drawn in a host of pundits, including Think Progress blogger Matt Yglesias, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins struck early, accusing Hvistendahl of blaming science on the gender gap, instead of blaming the "cultural and religious practices that despise and discriminate against women in the first place." He posed the question to Hvistendahl "Why do we blame science for offering a method to do bad things?" and she responded on her blog:

I am responding to allegations made by Richard Dawkins that my book is critical of science. It is not... What do I actually say in my book? I point out that early research into sex determination techniques like amniocentesis and ultrasound went ahead for various reasons... But beginning in the 1960s a separate group of scientists proposed pushing along research into sex selection--not simply using existing techniques, but actively funding new work--for a reason that had nothing to do with avoiding disease or improving maternal health. These scientists were interested in sex selection’s significance in the developing world

She goes on to explain Western involvement in promoting sex-selection in the developing world, such as when the Population Council sent representatives to India to found a department of reproductive physiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, "which would later inaugurate sex selection trials resulting in the abortion of hundreds of female fetuses." She concludes, "While Western science is not to blame for the disappearance of tens of millions of females from the global population, some Westerners did play a role in bringing sex selection to Asia. It is this role I hope we can discuss." The idea that West played a role in promoting sex-selective abortions intrigued the Times' pro-life columnist Ross Douthat, who riffed off the book on his Monday column, saying that sex-selective abortion puts pro-choice liberals in a difficult position.

Notwithstanding the depredations of the Chinese politburo, most of the abortions were (and continue to be) uncoerced. The American establishment helped create the problem, but now it's metastasizing on its own: the population-control movement is a shadow of its former self, yet sex selection has spread inexorably with access to abortion, and sex ratios are out of balance from Central Asia to the Balkans to Asian-American communities in the United States.

This places many Western liberals, Hvistendahl included, in a distinctly uncomfortable position. Their own premises insist that the unborn aren't human beings yet, and that the right to an abortion is nearly absolute.

Douthat concludes saying that "the tragedy of the world's 160 million missing girls isn't that they're 'missing,'" the word many have been using. "The tragedy is that they're dead." The provocative line sparked a response from Think Progress's pro-choice blogger Matt Yglesias who invited Douthat to take part in a thought experiment: what if the sex-selection process took place at the contraceptive stage and women could simply choose a "boy pill" or a "girl pill."

On joint Douthatian and Yglesian principles, nobody's being killed here. But I think that if we found out that use of the "boy" pill was extremely widespread, this might still legitimately worry us for three kinds of reasons. One is that widespread use of the boy pill would express the inegalitarian idea that men are more valuable than women. A second is that widespread use of the boy pill would reflect the existence of ongoing inequities in society that make it the case that a male child is more valuable than a female child. The third is that there are plausible reasons to believe that even a relatively small gender gap in the population could have problematic macro-scale consequences for society.

As it happens, sex-selective medical intervention overwhelmingly takes the form of abortions. But there are plenty of reasons you might be concerned about the phenomenon that don't have to do with abortion specifically.

I wasn’t suggesting that pro-choice liberals have no reason to be “concerned about the phenomenon” of 160 million missing girls. (I would hope that they’re concerned!) My point was that the story of sex-selective abortion creates more difficulties — both intellectually and, I would submit, emotionally — for abortion-rights supporters than it does for those of us on the pro-life side of the argument. For one thing, it presents a policy problem: If the right to abortion is a fundamental human liberty, how do you address sex selection without infringing dramatically on the right to privacy?

As the debate between Douthat and Yglesias will likely continue, the message of Hvistendahl's book continues to spread as she writes in various outlets. In her Monday Foreign Policyessay, Hvistendahl was careful to depict herself as unaligned with conservatives or Christians in the U.S., criticizing both pro-life and pro-choice groups as being overly-focused on domestic issues of abortion. "As American politicians argue over whether to cut Planned Parenthood's U.S. funding and the Christian right drives through bans on sex-selective abortion at the state level, the effects of three decades of sex selection elsewhere in the world are becoming alarmingly apparent, she wrote:

Four decades ago, Western advocacy of sex selection yielded tragic results. But if we continue to ignore that legacy and remain paralyzed by heated U.S. abortion politics, we're compounding that mistake. Indian public health activist George, indeed, says waiting to act is no longer an option: If the world does "not see ten years ahead to where we're headed, we're lost."

he White House said Tuesday it will not move forward with a proposal that would have tested the ease or difficulty for Americans in finding and receiving primary medical care through the use of so-called "mystery shoppers."

The proposal, which meant to address a shortage of primary care physicians in America and investigate the possible subsequent coverage gap, would have had contractors call more than 4,000 doctors in nine states in America. The New York Times, reporting on the story this week, described the mission as a "stealth survey" in which those contractors, acting as prospective patients, would attempt to make appointments in order to evaluate how difficult it was to find primary care. It would also have evaluated whether or not doctors were more likely to accept patients with private insurance over those covered by government health programs.

On Tuesday, however, in light of criticism that the program amounted to federal "spying" and a waste of tax dollars, Health and Human Services said it was scrapping the plan.

"After reviewing feedback received during the public comment period, we have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this[Emphasis mine. - F.G. Beware ol' jug ears' second term, kiddies. There will be nothing to check his totalitarian impulses.] research project," an HHS spokesperson said in a statement. "Instead, we will pursue other initiatives that build on our efforts to increase access to health care providers nationwide."

"The Obama Administration has made the recruitment and retention of primary care professionals a top priority," the HHS official continued. "Together, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Affordable Care Act and ongoing federal investments in the health care workforce have led to significant progress in training more new primary care providers - including physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants - and encouraging primary care providers to practice in underserved areas."

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., one of the most vociferous critics of the survey, praised the department's decision not to pursue the project.

"HHS made the right decision to dump the 'secret surveys' to spy on physician offices," he said. "I spoke against this misallocation of taxpayer dollars today on the Senate floor because the survey is duplicative of what we already know and funding should be spent solving problems, not studying them."

In a letter protesting the program, which he circulated in the Senate earlier on Tuesday, Kirk questioned the ethics and legality of the proposal.

"We have deep concerns regarding the Department's recent plans for a 'stealth survey,' its legality, notification to Congress and lack of standards for any misconduct or bad reporting by the staff hired to carry out this work on American doctors and their practice of medicine," he wrote in the letter.

Doctors, too, had expressed critical views of the project.

"I don't like the idea of the government snooping," Dr. Raymond Scalettar, a Washington-area internist, told the Times.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

"How dare you be conservative, you darkie? We bought and paid for all your people's souls many times over, so sit down, shut up, and obey your moral and intellectual superiors!"["That goes double for you, Clarence Thomas."]

Valdez is under guard at a nearby hospital, and it would all be another ugly crime story, except for this: Police say Valdez, 36, updated his Facebook status all through the confrontation -- and friends replied with encouragement and, in at least one case, help.

"I'm currently in a stand off wit these shady [expletives] from old, kinda ugly but ready for whatever," Valdez wrote in his first post at 11:23 p.m. Friday. "I love u guyz and if I don't make it out of here alive that I'm in a better place and u were all great friends...."

Another person replied, "jason be strong , you have family here for you. We love u!"

Valdez had a long criminal record, according to court records reviewed by The Associated Press, including convictions for aggravated assault and domestic violence in front of a child.

Police were trying to serve Valdez with a felony drug warrant Friday, when he barricaded himself in a room at the Western Colony Inn in Ogden, blocking the door and windows with furniture. He said on Facebook there was a woman with him named Veronica. At 2:04 a.m. he posted two pictures of himself with a young woman, apparently taken in the motel room.

"He had a smartphone with him and he was making updates," said Ogden Police Lt. Danielle Croyle, the watch commander. "The officers on the scene were aware of it and they changed tactics accordingly."

There was at least one post to Valdez from someone else, saying there was a SWAT team member hiding close to the room.

"Gun ner in the bushes stay low," said the post.

"Thank you homie," Valdez replied. "Good looking out."

"It does cause concern because there were bystanders who knew him," Croyle said. "Our priority is the safety of the community, and safety is compromised when the location of officers is revealed."

Police said they tried to negotiate with the gunman, but he missed several deadlines they set. At 3:30 a.m., he sent this post: "They shut down all power and our phones are dying but I'm keep letting u all know I'm okay til these foolz make some dumb [expletive] move! Told em ill come out WHEN IM READY!!!!"

People who knew Valdez, contacted by ABC affiliate KTVX, came to his defense: "That dude is a good dude, and he'll do anything for anybody, and he's helped me a lot," said Amanda Hines, who called herself a friend.

"I tried to talk to him," said Manuel Navarro, who said he was a cousin. "You have family, we don't' need you to go out like that."

Valdez's last post was at 7:25 a.m. Saturday: "Well i was lettin this girl go but these dumb bastards made an attempt to come in after i told them not to, so i popped off a couple more shots and now were startin all over again it seems...."

An hour later, police said, they broke through the wall to arrest Valdez, but he shot himself before they could get to him. They said he is recovering from the gunshot wound, though they have not been given a prognosis. Police said officers on the scene never fired their weapons.

Charges are pending; Croyle said they could include kidnapping and attempted homicide. She said his Facebook friends could also face charges for trying to help him.

"Facebook can be a help, but it can also be a hindrance," Lt. Croyle said. "We just rolled with it."

*How do we know when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is going too far? They’re just looking out for our well-being, right? They have to take every precaution to make sure that the most unqualified candidates for security breaches are the first checked. Well! Too far is when you ask an elderly woman to remove [...]

COMMENTARY | So far this year the Transportation Security Administration has been under fire for a pat-down search on a 6-year-old and most recently for asking a 95-year-old cancer patient to remove her adult diapers for a pat-down. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the TSA has backed the agents who performed the searches, claiming they followed procedure and protocol...

After the story of the 95-year-old woman forced to remove her adult diaper to get through a TSA checkpoint, this news out of Texas should warm some hearts:The Texas bill aimed at criminalizing TSA groping of airline passengers, which was unanimously approved by the state House last month but dropped by its chief Senate sponsor in response to federal threats, has been revived in a special ...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Texas Governor Rick Perry looked and sounded like a White House contender on Saturday, delivering a fiery condemnation of President Barack Obama and Washington to a crowd of Republican activists chanting "Run, Rick, Run."

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton may be sitting out the first round of presidential debates and long hours driving across Iowa, but he's still not ruling out a possible run for the White House in 2012.

In a far-ranging interview with National Review, Bolton outlined his campaign strategy and even took a shot from the sidelines at Jon Huntsman, who left his post in the Obama administration as the nation's ambassador to China to run against his former boss.

Bolton suggested that Huntsman should have rejected Obama's invitation to serve in China.

"There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values. That's not the call of patriotism," Bolton told NRO's Robert Costa. "I don't understand it. This is not like World War II, when we are facing an existential threat to the country as a whole, and you do put partisanship aside."

Foreign policy is one area where Bolton, now a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arguably has an advantage over other candidates currently in the field. In addition to his UN post, he has worked under three Republican administrations and served in the State Department under both Bush presidencies.

In a separate interview last week, Bolton said that none of the candidates has shown the level of interest a president should in international affairs.

"I don't see any of the Republicans in the race now who have made foreign policy a priority," he said.

It is for that reason that Bolton, who has not set up an exploratory committee or even a PAC, said he's still keeping his options open.

"Clearly the field is not fixed," he said.

Bolton has said that either way, he'll announce his decision by Labor Day.

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, sharply criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Middle East while testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday morning.

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.